Quote:
Originally posted by sixto
One of the things that has been slowly killing baseball is the suburbs. Kids live so far from parks that they can't walk to one to play baseball.
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When I was growing up (born in 79) there were four baseball diamonds within a 1/2 mile walk of my house. When I was really little, my dad, brother and about 10 of his friends used to go to the park and play a pick up game. You guys know what I am talking about, where if you are a righty you have to hit it to left and vice versa. Well anyways, sometime in the mid 90's the freaking city I live in decided to make it so that those parks could only be used by the city's offical little league teams. They said that people were tearing up the field by playing pickup games on the fields. The funny thing is that the offical teams only played from April to July, but you still werent allowed to play on the field during the off season.
What killed baseball for me was the 94 strike. I was 15 years old and the strike made me realize that the game that I loved so dear was not really a game but a business. The hard facts of that crashed down on me and ended my love of professional baseball. 1998 sucked me right back in. For 6 months in 98 I started to stupidly think that maybe the game I love was back. My Dad (who stopped following baseball in 94 as well) promised me that baseball would screw the fans again, just give it time. I told him, oh no Dad, they have learned their lesson. Well, obviously they have not. I am sure that a couple of times this year I will drive up to Lansing and watch the Lugnuts minor league team play for $5, but I seriously doubt I will be opening my wallet at Comerica (with its closer fences) this year.